When the remnants of Hurricane Ida arrived in the Bronx, I messaged all my group chats. Was everyone safe? Exhausted from everything that is already happening to our BIPOC communities, I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t stop worrying. I panicked as friends sent videos of their flooding basement. One person’s Instagram showed people in a flooded bus lifting their feet. The videos of strangers’ apartments and water raging into train stops still haunts me. I finally broke when I got a text in a community organizing chat that someone in a wheelchair was stuck in their flooded apartment and needed to get out. We didn’t know their immediate needs, or if they were safe. They got themselves out, alone, and unfortunately had to stay in an inaccessible hotel for the night. However, what we knew from the beginning was that they were calling on the community, not 911, because they did not feel safe.
This is a part of environmental injustice that many still don’t understand. We are taught in this racist, queerphobic, transphobic, ableist society to rely on racist, queerphobic, transphobic, ableist systems that exterminate us. Everyone says call 911, but why should we when, especially as people of color, we call 911 and could be killed? This person had to choose between risking their life in more ways than cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied white people could ever consider.
I tried not to cry, thinking about how this individual is just one of many who were and remain in worse situations, especially for unhoused community members, who for the sake of survival cannot put their lives, especially lives of color, in the hands of police. It is this distrust in a time crisis is exactly why we must reallocate funds from violent structures like police and into safer ones like housing, food security and the environment. Scientists predicted more extreme weather, and Ida was proof of it.
Funding the police, whom I never see wearing masks on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) during this pandemic despite all the signs on transit, was clearly a mistake. When the chance presented itself in 2019, the MTA increased police presence and it cost our community over $260 million. That money could have kept people safe through environmentally conscious steps such as improving ventilation on train cars, pollution reduction measures or improving water pumping systems. After Ida passed over, so many trains were down that it seemed almost impossible to get to work. As a dancer who has to train almost daily, I had to forego class, which reduces my chance at finding work.
Last year, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a budget cut of $1 billion from the police. This came alongside an increase in police funding in New York public schools. That money could have improved drainage systems, brought more renewable energy resources or could have been invested in housing to keep people safe, especially during COVID. Instead, we are counting deaths that this city could have prevented. We grieve for the people and families drowned in basement apartments, who could still be alive today in environmentally conscious and equitable housing.
Throughout the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens, community organizers immediately took to the streets to provide care and mutual aid. We are already donating clothes, food and cleaning debris. We are keeping us safe. We already have strategies for community safety and de-escalation that do not involve the police — not just during this crisis, but in our direct actions as well. Immediately, folks on the ground organized clothing drives, helped individuals gain flood assistance from the government, and more. We have yet to see police assist in post-Ida destruction, trauma or loss of life. Our tax dollars should be providing this relief, not our personal finances when we are already slammed by the pandemic and barely have the funds to remain housed.
Whoever becomes the next mayor of this city will inherit a legacy of climate catastrophe, government failures and so much suffering for no reason other than that money was poorly invested in unsustainable sectors. I hope they make the right decisions. I have nothing but doubts.
I think of the Senate that only last month voted almost unanimously to expand police nationwide by 100,000 and to deny federal funding to any municipality that defunded police. I invite all of them to move into a basement apartment in Queens without their paychecks. The people need that money for greener and more equitable solutions. Policing is not one of them.
The United States government on every level has failed our communities by investing tax dollars into police instead of holistic community safety that is environmentally conscious. Now, we the people are paying the price for it. Capitalism, in so many ways, is destroying capitalist structures by not investing in our safety.
As a nation, we stand at a crossroads. It is clearer than ever that the colonial state is collapsing. So, do we remain faithful to an ailing government that claws at systems of capital and control, or band together and care for our communities, in providing sustainable and safe housing, renewable energy, food security, so that we can salvage what is left of a further dimming future?
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We are presently looking for 350 new monthly donors in the next 6 days.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy